February 27, 2008

Participants: Nadine, Gili, Binyamin, David

[Note this is the second of two weeks that I (Jon) am away. The report was done by Nadine.]

R-Eco

Nadine 21, Binyamin 10, Gili 1

Binyamin joined after we had played a few rounds. I had more luck than I thought the game has. [Gili 1? She must have been thrilled.]

David & Goliath

Gili 39, Nadine 32, Binyamin 27

Binyamin knew I had this and wanted to try it, another Secret Santa gift, from last year. We usually don't play with real cards. It's hard to get used to how it works, and feels hard to control.

[I've played this a number of times and haven't decided what the basic strategies are, other than simple tactics.]

Power Grid

Tie 17/17 all (final money: David 84, Binyamin 26, Gili 13, Nadine 0)

[The game was played on the] U.S. Board [using the] New [power plant] cards.

A fun game with lots of planning and recalculating buys in advance. A few lucky auctions despite the 4 card preview. The new cards are different, David says less interesting because they're more similar to each other. So to some extent fewer competitive auctions. Binyamin was trying to buy to 18 on the last round because he could fuel it, but couldn't buy the fuel and cities.

Bridge

David, Nadine, Binyamin

[They played three-player for a while after Gili left.]

February 20, 2008

Participants: Daniel, Cigal, Yitzhak, Gili, Binyamin, David, Nadine

[Nadine wrote this report, as Jon is in Canada. Game night was at Nadine's. Cigal is the same Sigal from previous weeks, but Nadine's spelling of the name; I don't know which is right. -J]

A visitor who is going back to the states next week after 6 mo. in Israel came -
Daniel, a grad student in Astronomy at the Univ. of Texas, Austin.

R-Eco

Daniel 10, Yitzhak 5, Nadine 4 Gili 1, Cigal -1

[This is a filler game that Nadine received from her Secret Santa. It's quick and light, and pretty decent. -J]

Started with Daniel, then started over with Cigal and Gili, then added Yitzhak after a few rounds.

Notre Dame

Gili 61, Yitzhak 49, Cigal 31

[No info provided. -J]

Nadine 71, David 62, Binyamin 37

Binyamin pointed out that the carriage markers are face up, which changes things. [I must look this up in the rules. -J] I accidentally took two blues so gave up the extra two points at the end, it's unlikely it would have had any other effect but it's bad not to notice. I was in Notre Dame on my own in the last round because they got the card early and weren't ready for it. David lost a lot to rats, Binyamin also.

David 61, Nadine 57, Binyamin 55

A much closer game. Fewer rats, a lot of people in Notre Dame. David got almost all the carriage markers.

Tower of Babel

Binyamin with David 85, Daniel 75, Nadine 64

[No info provided. -J]

Puerto Rico

Yitzhak 48, Cigal 42, Daniel 36, Gili 33

Daniel had played San Juan but not Puerto Rico. Cigal's played neither, she said Yitzhak helped her. Three replacements: Storehouse, Trading Post and Small Wharf, from the new set from my Secret Santa. One of my Factories seems to be missing, and a Coffee.

February 13, 2008

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, David, Yitzchak, Sigal

I'm still not sure I have Sigal's name correct.

Mr Jack

Jon (Detective)+, Nadine (Criminal)

I thought this would make an opener while we waited for others to arrive, but it takes a lot longer than I remembered. As a result, we started a few rounds and then picked it up later again at the end of the evening. Tearing Nadine away from the game is hard work.

I eliminated 1, 2, 1, 1, 2 characters on the first through fifth rounds. Stepping on Jack at the end was trivial.

Notre Dame

Yitzchak 67, Nadine 58, Gili 57, Sigal 38

We set this up for four and I explained the game to David. Yitzchak and Sigal showed up in the middle, so David and I abandoned the game to play Magic. All during Magic, however, though we were having a good time, he looked appraisingly at the game and said that it looks good.

Our games of Notre Dame have all been either runaway marginal victories - the leader going in to round seven essentially maintains his lead without too much trouble - or stunning upsets - someone suddenly pulls ahead 15 or 20 points to take over. These are growth spurts. As we learn to play better and find what works and what doesn't, and share this information, we will begin seeing closer games, I believe.

David 65, Nadine 58, Jon 48

This was an example of the first type of game. David managed to pull off an uncontested victory in Notre Dame in round 6, where neither Nadine nor I could use the cards and so had to pass them in round 4. The resulting 14 point jump was unassailable by either of us during the remaining rounds.

I put a few cubes into the VP track in round 1, prompting Nadine to say for the next few rounds how much of a threat I now was for the rest of the game and how no one should pass me any VP track cards for the rest of the game. It was already obvious I was losing by round 6, however.

Magic: the Gathering

David++, Jon+

This is always enjoyable, even when I lose badly. I didn't lose badly this time. We still have too many games thrown by mana curves, but that just makes it all the more challenging. We've tried a few of the alternatives and we're not really happy with them.

We're still working through the common cards I bought fro my last trip to Toronto, which means all the cards are new to both of us. As usual, we Rochester drafted out of 90 cards for decks, which is half the fun.

I put together a green and white deck with a splash of red and a number of equipment. I put in only three Mountains to support the red. In the first game, I got all the Mountains in the first ten cards, and no Forests during the game. In the second game I got all the Mountains in my first ten cards, and one Forest a few cards later. And in the third game I got two of the Mountains in my first ten cards, but a balance of Forests after that.

I won the first game with a white card that lets me toss useless cards to put two white 1/1 tokens into play. I had lots of useless green cards to toss. The second game, David pretty much flew over me. In the third game, I should have won, but I wasn't paying attention to his lack of mana and didn't attack with everything for fear of reprisal. He was down to 2. I pulled a direct damage that took him down to 1, naturally not drawing the other one which would have taken him down to 0.

I'm on vacation for the next two weeks, so game nights will be at Nadine's.

Febuary 06, 2007

Participants: Nadine, Gili, Yitzchak, Dylan, Jon

Nadine hosted in my house until I returned from an appointment.

Odin's Ravens

Gili 5, Nadine 2

Huh. I didn't think anyone else liked this enough to pull it out voluntarily. On the other hand, no one ever seems to bother trying to complete an entire game (to 12 points).

Notre Dame

Yitzchak 62 Nadine 60 Gili 50

A new group favorite. Apparently there was some sort of upset. Nadine was winning but didn't earn any points in the last round. Yitzchak came from behind to victory.

Atlantic Star

Jon 50, Dylan 45, Yitzchak 39, Nadine 37, Gili 28

They all had a hard time deciding what to play next, so I forced this on them. This is a game which we've only played once. I liked it, but the other players, including Yitzchak, Dylan, and Ben, complained that there was too much luck. I thought they were highly exaggerating at the time and the game deserved another go.

It took a few minutes to remember the rules. Once again, I highly enjoyed the game. The two Queen games I've played (this and Alhambra) seem to have little in the way of plannable tactics, as the board generally completely resets by the time it's your turn again. Which is a negative.

On the other hand, in this game you definitely have long term planning options, which mitigates the lack of strategy quite well. Yeah, there's luck, but it doesn't have the effect of ruining the game; a better player will generally have better chances, at least. (This is not true for Alhambra, which is why I didn't like it.)

I think Yitzchak felt a bit better about the game this time, but still not enthusiastic. Nadine also did her share of complaining, although she tends to complain about every game that isn't Puerto Rico lately :-) . Dylan seemed to enjoy it.

Dungeon Twister

Jon 5, Dylan 2

The others went, and I thought Dylan would be the perfect one on which to try out this game. Neither of us had played it.

It's an action point race game with a rich fantasy RPG theme. You've got eight characters to move out your opponent's side of a maze-like board. Various useful items are sprinkled around. Each character can only carry one at a time. The maze is made of passages, walls, pits, and doors, the latter three of which can be passed only by some people or using some items.

And topping it off, the maze is divided into eight sections, each of which can be rotated a quarter turn at a time by someone sitting on the rotation gear which can be found in each section. That makes traversal of the playing field, and avoidance of barriers within, uniquely interesting, as everything and everyone on the dungeon rotates along with the section.

I've heard this game called "Chess like" which is completely untrue. There's blind luck when you have combats, for one thing. For another, it just doesn't feel like chess. It feels like a dungeon crawl, not like an abstract.

The game asks you to choose secretly your starting positions, but we played by randomly placing all the pieces. It was a tense and close game for all that. I suspect that the random placement is probably the best, but I'll have to read up on the strategies of opening placement to see.

It's quite good. I won, but I suspect that I'm not very good at the game and will probably lose most of the time to certain players.

I started with an early lead, but discovered that taking my best characters off the board early can make it quite difficult for the remaining characters. One negative of the game is that each piece moves independently. That makes movement as a party rather difficult and it loses something for that.

Another thing I didn't fully like was that wounded characters were essentially dead. It would help a lot if they could at least still move.

Dylan came up from behind with a strategic lineup across the board which made it look like my remaining two characters who had any chance to escape were likely doomed. But then he undervalued a combat with his strongest player against mine. I ended up killing him (worth a point) and escaping with that player (worth another point) to win the game (at five points).

As I said, it's a very good mind-bender of a game which I'll happily play again.

January 30, 2007

Participants: Jon, Gili, Nadine

These two were the only ones to brave the cold and snow to my house.

Odin's Ravens

Gili 5, Jon 4

We only played this until Nadine came. Once both players get the hang of it, each round can be fairly close. But before we're completely used to the patterns, rounds are still a bit too long. As a result, it wasn't an entirely thrilling game, but I expect that it will be a bit better with two more experienced opponents.

Notre Dame

Gili 81, Jon 72, Nadine 58

Both of them were eager to get to this game, again. It seems like a fascinating game with many avenues to explore, but well balanced; time will tell. In the meantime, we're all still exploring. Like the other best games, you always want to do so much more each round than you can.

Gili won with the cumulative VP track this time. I kept handing these cards to Nadine because they weren't useful enough to me, and she kept handing them to Gili because they weren't useful enough to her. I blamed Nadine for not keeping them anyway, and she blamed me for giving them to here. There may be a slight issue with the game if your RHO is overly nice or harsh.

I tried the Park VP bonus strategy again, but it couldn't compete with the amount Gili got from straight cumulative VPs. I also had lots of cubes at the beginning and picked up five messages. Once again I thought I was doing pretty well, but it wasn't well enough. Nadine followed something similar, but I made it more difficult for her, as she was my LHO.

Lost Valley

Jon 24, Gili 23, Nadine 21

When I first played this I really liked it, but after a while huge flaws in the mechanics began to appear. Or rather, abusable mechanics. Essentially, once you are comfortably ahead, which can be primarily due to luck, you can massively push forward the end game and solidify your victory. This is not only unfair but very frustrating.

While it didn't happen in this game, it's only because Gili was gracious enough not to do it, claiming that the game would have been boring if she had done so.

Even without her having done it, there's still something lacking in the game play, which is a bit overly fiddly and mechanical. I suspect that it's because of the very narrow path to victory relying entirely on gold chips. Like Thebes (which is a better game), it is annoying to play well but get unlucky when panning for gold. In Lost Valley, gold is your only source of victory points, and you don't get too many of them, so random victory points just sucks.

Designers take note: just because something is realistic doesn't make it a good game mechanic.

I'm thinking that I'm going to have to fix this game, somehow. First I'll check BGG for variants. But minimally:

- There has to be a limit to the amount of territory that may be explored while there are still unclaimed gold chips.

- Gold chips have to be more determined, or have to have less to do with victory points.

- While it is not a horrible mechanic that one fears expending resources on items that will benefit everyone (sawmills, mines, etc), it also isn't a great mechanic. Many other games at least give you some benefit for doing it, such as VPs when you build it, or VPs when others use it. LV needs a similar mechanic.

- And, as I already go, each player must start with 2 gold nuggets.

These should go a long way to helping restore the fun into the game.

January 24, 2008

Participants: Jon, Gili, Yitzchak, Nadine, Sigal

This week's game night was help on Thursday instead of Wednesday owing to a wedding on Wednesday night. Yitzchak brought the amiable and lovely Sigal (I think ... damn, I'm bad with names) for her first visit.

Notre Dame

Nadine 60, Jon 59, Yitzchak 54, Gili 46, Sigal 23

My top secret santa gift, I played this in November on my trip to BGG.con at the Tuesday night Dallas group. I love it and though the group might, too. Sometimes when I like a game the group ends up not liking it.

Luckily, they all liked this one. It's mostly from owing to the large range of available strategies and the scant few actions you can take each round, despite needing all of them. It's definitely up there with Princes of Florence and so on.

When I played in Dallas, the person who taught us had one of the rules wrong. He said that the Park gives you -1 rat each time you use it and +1 VP every second time you use it. No one could figure out the point of using it, unless you had nothing better to do. However, the real rule is -1 rat each time you use it and for every two times you've used it you get +1 VP every time you gain VP from any other action from then on. Big difference.

Yitzchak was trying some mass VP strategies that quickly left him idling. I was also idling along, but I was still gaining more VP than Yitzchak. Gili was also fairly close with Nadine behind her. I felt like I was on the way to win.

Unfortunately for us, round 7 opened with everyone except Nadine drawing the Notre Dame action and no cash to use it. These 4 cards all went to waste. On round 9, Nadine then drew here Notre Dame card. She used it for 6 VP, and then pulled in an uncontested 12 more points at the end of the round. 18 VP took her from 4th place to beating me by a single point at the end of the game. Life's not fair.

It's Alive

Sigal 42, Jon 37, Nadine, Yitzchak, Gili

I usually don't recommend playing this with five players, but we needed something for five that was more than light but less then heavy. And it's still a great game.

It worked out very well for us. Nadine managed to scoop three coffins as her three first cards through heavy bidding, outbidding me by one twice, and I was convinced she was going to win, regardless of who filled their board. I publicly hoped she would draw a Villager before she could replenish her cash, which she said was mean. And she actually did draw a Villager before she could replenish her cash. Sweet revenge.

Sigal finished her board with low pieces, but it was still enough to win.

January 16, 2008

Participants: Jon, Binyamin, Nadine, Ben, Yitzchak, Gili, Cliff, Raphi

Nadine invited Cliff, who lives in our area. Strange that he's never come before, as he has experience with many Euro and war games. Not only that, but he brought his daughter Raphi who also plays. Hopefully, they will begin coming often. (Nadine says that he has four children and thought the game night ended earlier, which is why he hasn't come sooner.)

Blue Moon

Binyamin+, Jon

I took out Blue Moon to learn how to play it. As I read the rules, I began to get a sinking feeling.

I like Knizia's board games, but I find his card games to be too simplistic. Lost Cities, Flinke Pinke, and so on are clever and diverting enough for a child, but not for me. They are basically number games; throw the numbers around and hope to end up with the right ones. The decisions are usually fairly trivial and entirely too mathematical.

I honestly expected Blue Moon to be something entirely different, given its rich theme and comparison to Magic-lite. Yet, upon reading the rules, it became clear that this was just one more game of numbered cards and little else.

To make matters worse, the price of the game was inflated, as often happens, with fancy bits of useless pieces; it's a card game, and could be sold for four dollars if created simpler. To make matters even worse, the pictures on the cards are horribly sexist and borderline pornographic. This is a common complaint about the game, but it's still true.

Nevertheless, I gamely decided to try it out with Binyamin, looking at the rules as we played. We played around halfway through one game until wee essentially got the rules, and the restarted a fresh game.

Thankfully, the game turns out to be better than expected. Far better than Lost Cities, anyway.

Each round, you must place a creature or withdraw from the battle. If not withdrawing, you can also play a booster card on your creature or a support card. Any creature you play next round covers up any previous creatures and boosters that you've already played.

Each creature and most support cards have two sets of numbers on them: fire and earth. The first person to start a battle decides which number will be used for comparison during this battle. Every time it's your turn to play, you can only play if the relevant number of the creature you put down plus support cards will at least tie the corresponding total of your opponent.

Some cards have special abilities that boost the numbers of other cards or cancel cards of your opponents, so long as they're in play and uncovered.

So the essential mechanic is: if you put down your high card first, your opponent might withdraw and you'll win. But if he can answer your card, you will have to cover over your creature with another one which might be lower, in which case you would have to withdraw. So you might be better off placing a lower card first, rather than a higher one, saving your higher one for when you really need it. Or something like that.

After every battle, the person who won gets one or two points and all cards played are discarded. The game ends when someone has three more points than his opponent and is about to get his fourth. Otherwise, when someone runs out of cards, the score at the end of the game is your point differential over your opponent. Play a number of games until one person has won five points.

It's an ok game. There is unexplored tactics and strategy still to discover, which I'll happily do when I play again. The real interest in the game appears to be in buying the expansion sets and then creating decks, ala Magic.

Mr Jack

Jon (Criminal)+, Binyamin (Detective)

Binyamin wanted to see how to successfully play Criminal. Unfortunately for him, he left everyone in the dark at the end of round three, and it was then possible for me to escape at the beginning of round four.

I've come to appreciate the possibility of Criminal to win by simply not trying to escape. It's more of a puzzle than a game. And it's a bit frustrating that your strategy is entirely dictated by the card flips. If they flip one way, you have to do this, and if they flip the other way, you have to do that. It's a nice game, however.

El Grande

Nadine 132, Yitzchak 117, Ben 113, Gili 96

A high scoring game, as you can see. Nadine ended up ahead by the end of round three, and so it was expected that she would win by the end of the game, as she usually does. And so she did.

Round three scores: Nadine 52, Yitzchak 38, Gili 34, Ben 31
Round six scores: Nadine 86, Ben 74, Yitzchak 72, Gili 59

Magic: the Gathering

Binyamin+, Jon

This is rather pathetic. Binyamin and I Rochester drafted with some of my new cards. I ended up with a far, far, far superior deck of white flyers and tons of red direct damage. Binyamins was a basic hodgepodge of creatures. I lost the one game we played because I didn't draw a red land until I was down to 6 points, and my non-land cards were all red. Pure mana screw.

We didn't have a chance to play another game.

Power Grid

Cliff 11+, Jon 11-, Binyamin 11--, Raphi 10

I taught them this game, as it's a good game to get into for people who already know some gaming. We played on the easy US Eastern seaboard. I pretty much started out well and stayed that way.

I decided to end the game by building six cities right before Stage 3 started, as I had a reasonable hope that I would win on money anyway. Binyamin, Cliff, and I could all power 11, and Raphi could only power 10. But I had lots more money. Still, at th end, I was left with 30 and Cliff still had 49 or so.

If I had waited one more round, it would have come down to auctioning over the three 6 city power plants that were available. And that meant leaving my fate into the hands of others' possibly irrational actions.

Bridge

Ben, Jon, Binyamin, Yitzchak, Nadine

Binyamin and I both took up hands during Power Grid with the other three players.